The One That Got Away
by cheesemoi
Summary: Eight months after the Dulvey Incident, loose threads begin to lead Ethan back to the Baker house, so we can solve the meaning behind a cryptic message he had recieved from an unexpected someone
1. Chapter 1

At first, the nightmares were lucid and they were always the same.

He was in the mansion, trying to escape as the Baker family voices teased and taunted from beyond the walls. "Ethan, Ethan! You ain't ever gettin' away!" and "You've got to find a way out of that house" and "I'll kill you! I swear to fuck, I'll kill you!" looped over each other discordantly as Ethan rattled every door knob, feeling hope fade and fear mount with every locked passage. Their footsteps shook dust and plaster from the ceilings. As he dodged and navigated to try and find a way out, the looming black bodies of mold staggered around him, around every corner, and down every hall with hellish, plethoric ubiquity. He didn't have time to pull out that old survival knife by the time the next ones appeared. Most of them he could outrun, and he darted between their dank, fibrous, pungent bodies and wrestled with the handle on the next locked door until they caught up with him. They threw their heads back with open mouths screaming with once human voices and sprayed black spittle into the air. They slashed at him and clicked their teeth with anticipation as they drew nearer to him. He bolted to the next door that he already knew wouldn't open, trying it frantically so it shook silently on its hinges. The voices crescendoed louder and louder until he couldn't think straight anymore. Panicked desperation mounted with every step they took towards him until he resorted to beating the windows with his fist, hoping his wedding ring might help to break the glass. He punched through in the nick of time, sawing his wrist on the shards of glass still lodged in the pane as he grasped for the handle from the other side. The molded were upon him now, sneering and throwing their heads back, lunging. He kicked at them, trying to buy just a little more time as his middle finger graced the smooth brass doorknob. He kicked again, feeling a scream buzz in his chest, soundless under the Baker's voices. One of the monsters slashed at his leg. He felt his hamstring ball up behind his knee. Crossing his arms in front of his face, he collapsed to the floor, and the monsters' box-cutter fingers and needle teeth tore him into a bloody pulp. As the scene faded to red, Jack laughed "you missed a spot! You missed a spot!"

Then he opened his eyes and expected the afterlife, but saw only darkness. The ceiling fan whirred placidly overhead and Mia's somnolent breathing was something to mimic until his heartbeat slowed and the cold sweat dried. He swallowed heavily through labored breathing and sat up slowly, pressing the heel of his hand to his temple. The Dulvey Incident ended last August, but it persisted in his nightmares ever since, and made it feel like it had never really ended. Some nights, when he couldn't sleep, he visualised that black mold buried dormantly in the creases of his brain. Sometimes he could swear he felt it spreading throughout his body like bugs crawling across his skin. He had a scar on his right arm from when he had tried to break out of his own body, but that was before the doctors. That was before things went back to normal, an idea that was only something hopeful people suggested when they couldn't even begin to fathom the hell that someone else had gone through. He had hoped Umbrella would have had some fucking idea.

He laid back down and turned onto his side, clearing Mia's dark hair from her face so her fair, moonlight visage shone dimly in the dark room. The locks of her hair cast a shadow over her face as he moved it, redolent of the spiderweb veins that circled her eyes before her various attempts to kill him. His brow furrowed with the pang of the memory, but he couldn't bring himself to be afraid of her. Eveline was dead, he had given a dose of the serum to Mia, and if worse came to worst, it was the same old song and dance. He brushed another lock of hair from her face and it occurred to him that killing his wife shouldn't be something he had gotten used to.

Mia stirred and inhaled deeply as she awoke. She blinked her eyes half open and smiled softly like she was gazing at a waking dream. She put her hand to his cheek, reaching out to see if he was real, and drew a sigh of gentle relief through her nose as she felt his solid jaw, smooth cheeks, the warmth of another person beside her.

He placed his hand on top of hers and turned his head to kiss her palm, then closed his eyes with that same concerned crease in his brow.

"Can't sleep?" She asked through a drowsy shroud that toned her voice higher.

He opened his eyes slowly and looked into hers, dulled by her recent waking, as if they could speak the volumes that his words couldn't. He closed them again and shook his head no. In the dark she felt his answer in the palm of her hand, heard it in the friction between his skin and the pillowcase. "Not since August."

"What's on your mind?"

A stretch of silence followed, bearing the same weight that the question did. Eveline's mold was on his mind, in the blackened creases of his brain. Jack's taunting that drowned out his own screams was on his mind and reverberated in his head like camera flashes popping one after another, and lastly, how sometimes when he looked at her, all he saw -if only for a moment- was that inhuman monster she had become at the Baker's. Each of these lived within him like a parasite that might kill him if he wasn't careful, but that concept was neither foreign nor intimidating now. "I didn't mean to wake you up," he dismissed quietly. "I know adjusting back hasn't been easy for you, either. Go back to sleep, and I can tell you in the morning if you still want to know."

Mia propped herself up on her elbow and shifted closer to him. "Ethan," she hummed. "If there's anyone to understand what you're thinking about, it's me. I was there. I saw it all, too." Her tone was sweet and knowledgeable and intuitive with no doubt as to what his stress pertained to. "You can talk to me."

"Yeah," he replied, and gave her hand a squeeze, dragging his thumb across her tapered, human fingers. His concerned look melted and he coughed a shy laugh. "Of all the people I could be fucked up with, I'm glad it's you."

"That's the spirit," she smiled, and the warmth of it gilded her voice. "I wouldn't have wanted to go crazy with anyone else."

The energy settled into something more sober and charged, as Ethan pressed the tip of his tongue to his lower lip and practised articulating the words he was about to say. "Mia-" he started, then cut himself off as every question he had accumulated over the months collided in his mind. There was too much to say, and he couldn't think of where to begin. The hesitation spoke louder than any following sentence could. "I've been having this recurring nightmare every night since Dulvey," he started suddenly, submitting to Jack's echoing call. "I know you have yours, too, but every time I'm killed in the dream, I get this really weird feeling that it's not quite a memory nor an interpretation of one." Probing curiously, he slowly asked, "do you still feel her?" He took the inhale to say more, then dropped his subsequent thoughts in an exhale and waited for her to answer.

"Feel her influence?"

"Yeah, you'd know better than anyone," he repeated. "Do you remember who you were before Eveline? There's no way we walked out of that as the same people we used to be." He placed a hand on her shoulder and took a curious pause. "Do you think everything that happened just changed you? Or can you still feel her?"

"The three years are a blur," she answered calmly. "I only began to get my memories back when Evie showed me around the Annabelle, and even still I don't know what was real and what was her." She thought to herself for a moment, scratching at the walls she had built in her mind to repress the memories that dwelt there. To feel two consciousnesses occupy her mind, to lose control of herself with no way of knowing when she'd regain it, to be forced to become that which she was not: a mother; an abomination. It was a feeling she recalled from the darkest labyrinths of her mind, and one that had not been easily forgotten, too pointed and too abysmal to replicate outside of Louisiana even in the faintest repercussive echoes. There were crippling flashbacks, hellish nightmares, and a slew of ticks and habits that she had acquired after the Dulvey Incident, but none came close to that horror she had underwent when Eveline infected her psyche. "No," she said finally. "She's gone, Ethan. You destroyed her with the Albert. Anything I go through now is just the result of trauma." She put her fingers in his coarse blond hair and pushed it across his forehead, as if it would help to expose the inner workings of his mind. "It's not her."

"Okay," Ethan said thoughtfully, and left it at that so he could process her words before speaking again.

"Why?" She pressed, and ventured a guess for fear he wouldn't otherwise tell her. "Do you think you'll lose me to her again? That I'll hurt you like I did-"

"No, no," he cooed over her elevating voice as she scared herself with the thought. "I'm not worried about that. After all, I gave you the serum. I saw you resist her, and, baby, you were great. You took that serum and you stopped your infection." He drummed his fingers lightly on her shoulder. "I didn't stop mine."

"Come on," she said patiently, almost tempted to laugh, whether from the absurdity of his suggestion or the fear of what he was implying, she wasn't sure. "You stopped everyone's infection when you took Evie down. Umbrella co-"

"I don't think it's over," he muttered under her gentle reasoning, but it killed the voice in her throat. "I don't think it's over," he iterated, knowing that she wanted to mishear him. Eager to try and prove it, he asked, "tonight, before I woke you up, what did you dream?"

Mia shrugged lightly and shook her head. "I don't remember."

"Try."

She pursed her lips tightly and scoured the recesses of her recent memory for one of many dreams that felt so drainingly repetitive night after night. "I think I was at the boathouse. Marguerite was there, yelling some terrible things. I jumped over the railing to get away from her, but some molded rose up from the water and pulled me under. I was drowning when you woke me up."

"What was she saying?"

"I don't know, I don't remember."

"Was it 'you missed a spot?'"

"I don't remember," she insisted. "It was just a dream. What would that mean, anyway?"

"I think it means we have unfinished business in Dulvey," Ethan convinced himself, turning onto his back and watching the ceiling fan whir through narrow incredulous eyes. "It's too real to be a dream. It's happening there, and Jack's telling me about it in the same way he told me about Eveline back in August."

"It's been eight months," Mia reasoned. "Umbrella has been in there cleaning up this whole time. I don't think there's going to be anything left of the house at this point. Not to mention Redfield already got Lucas and Zoe. What's left?"

"I won't know until I go," he stated, so matter-of-factly it became inevitable. "But if there is something I missed, then Umbrella's down there cleaning up a mess that hasn't ended yet, and it's only going to create more victims."

"Hold on, think about this. You can't just up and leave on a hunch that you got from a dream."

"I've thought about it for eight months, Mia," he said tiredly. "I'm going. And if we're lucky you can say you told me so and I'll be back within a day."

Mia looked at him a moment longer, saying nothing, knowing that any words she might conjure would be futile in changing the outcome. She surveyed him like it was her last moment to take in those little details about him that she had fallen in love with, from the patches in his facial hair he'd never entertain, to the gentle kiss he had set in her palm, to his strong spirit that now tore away from her. When she had her fill counting every idiosyncrasy she could think of, she turned over, shut her eyes, and left him once again in the dark room, where his mind ran untamed without the word of another. The thought of returning back to Dulvey put a foul taste in his mouth, filling his gut with dread and anticipation. He milled it over and over in his mind as the ceiling fan above spun in its same familiar circles, and hummed with an energy known only to itself.


	2. Chapter 2

The car crawled cautiously over the rocks and large branches that riddled the bushwhacked trail he only knew from dreams. He got stuck only twice in the softened earth by the mangroves, and jammed flat discs of stone between the tires and the mud, determined to reach his destination. As he pressed the gas and pulled the car forward with a wet, organic sucking sound, part of him thought he shouldn't be doing this alone. The other part told him he wasn't.

He battled that thought back like it was molded and continued driving until the trees got too thick and too dense to weave through. It didn't seem so long ago he was pulling up to this very same spot. _Eight months,_ he thought, _eight months of shit nightmares just to be back here again._ Putting the car in park, he muttered a string of vulgarities, and stepped into the dewy Louisiana air. Clouds of insects swarmed between the trees as he followed the overgrown path to the house. He reminded himself to be thorough, inspecting the sawblades, looking through the lynched dolls' hollow bodies, and cracking open the door to the Swamp Gator's van in search of anything he might've missed and found nothing.

The guest house smiled with twisted wooden teeth beyond the wrought iron fence. The white paint that once covered it peeled away in crooked shards as lichen and calcified mold took its place. The huge tendril that once was Eveline hung stiffly over the shattered remains and broke apart into dust, washing the surrounding yard with grey.

"God, I hope she's dead," he breathed to himself as strange doubt clawed at his chest. He pushed the iron gate open with his shoulder as it dragged over the unkempt ground, keeping his eye on the calcified body. The gate shrieked as its hinges scraped against each other for the first time in months with a cry so piercing he expected the corpse to twitch instinctually. A flickering in the corner of his eye made it seem like she might have. He waited to see if it would happen again. The wind through the trees laughed at him, waving derisively for his attention, but the stalk of the former bioweapon remained still. His guard settled hesitantly, as if she would lurch to life as soon as it fell. "God, I really fucking hope she's fucking dead."

He approached the main house cautiously as the tri-colored cerberus called him forward. An uncharacteristic yellow swath hung underneath the three dogs' heads that he couldn't distinguish from a distance. Walking up the porch stairs that creaked and warped under his weight, he paused outside the door and saw the yellow form was a warning, embossed with Umbrella's insignia. Written in rushed, slashing strokes, it read, "Biohazard evac immediately avoid all contact" and further down, barely legible, "hold your fire and retreat do not attempt to terminate the target it will not fucking die." Ethan lifted the paper and checked the back, finding it blank, and the paper fell lazily, returning to its ominous position. "Great." Ethan muttered to himself, filling the silence that he alone occupied. "Talk about 'you missed a spot.'"

Pushing the main door open and turning his phone light on, he walked through the entry hall and the long winding hallway. Every window and crack in the split wooden walls was sealed shut with grey and white calcium veins that solidified the already tough organism. He rounded the corner into the dining room where the infestation thinned out and stood quietly for a moment, waiting to hear heavy footprints from the other room, or the breathy groans of those monsters who only knew to kill. The hum of the insects and the creaking of the old wooden walls were all that sounded near him. His guard dipped at the perceived clearance of danger but he kept his ear strained for any sign of movement that wasn't his own.

He opened a pot that sat on the kitchen counter, expecting to find the same cannibal stew that had always been there, and almost dropped the heavy lid when a half-rotten face lolled back at him instead. Its eyes rolled back and its mouth hung drily open, long grey teeth and opaque eyes growing from the open brain. The remains of its helmet donned the sign of Blue Umbrella.

He closed his eyes and turned away more out of disgust at his finding than of respect for the fallen operative and waited for the taste of bile to settle in the back of his throat. "Oh, you gotta be fucking kidding me," he said gutturally, placing the back of his hand over his nose and mouth as the offensive smell of it reached him. "This shit again?" Another second passed and he opened his eyes, blinking away the burning stench and noticed a dark, evenly-dimensioned smear on the coffee table in the living room. He took one last look in the pot, said a mental apology and thanks to the life that had been laid down, a curse to the one half-created, and replaced the lid with unnerved reverence.

The rectangular smudge on the table remained stagnant and familiar as Ethan approached it. Shining the light on it, the plastic of the VHS tape shone glaringly in contrast to its dark matte surroundings. It sat so perfectly positioned on the table, so deliberately placed, that whoever had put it there must have wanted it to be seen. He thought back to the note on the door, pushed the image of the fallen operative quickly by, and looked down at the VHS tape with sinking dread. Its dingy, formerly white label had two words scratched into it: "Welcome Back."

The light swept the room for any indication of movement, of eyes, of the source that his paranoia dripped from in itchy, viscous, unshakable strands. He sighed wearily and rubbed his face with his free hand. By picking the tape up, he would be agreeing to play whatever little game was set before him. An unmerited wave of responsibility surged through him. He was a systems engineer from Texas, unaffiliated with the Connections, or Umbrella, or BSAA, or any political force that had a hand in the events leading up to the incident, but he'd be damned if he didn't finish what should have been finished all those months ago. He pursed his lips and lifted the tape from the table, flipping it over. "Alright," he muttered bitterly as the feeling of responsibility boosted a determination that surpassed the echoes of guilt. "You want to play?" he demanded, addressing the house, its residents, and himself, all simultaneously in one statement as he brought the tape up to the rec room. "Let's play," he challenged, pushing the tape into the VCR, and the squat little monitor buzzed to life.

 _The screen lit up with the color testing bars as a timer ticked rapidly in the top left corner, just above "August 28, 2017. Chris Redfield. Dulvey Incident." The color bars flickered a few times and white writing appeared in the center: "Dulvey Field Log. Baker Residence. Two Weeks Post." The words quivered and then blinked out, and the color bars were sucked to the center of the screen._

 _The grounds of the house were coated in ash and debris. Umbrella operatives scurried about, ducking into green tents, analysing samples. High-tech machines beeped and whirred as Redfield surveyed the premises, walking with a purpose from station to station. Gunshots padded gently in the distance._

 _A white synthesiser spun vessels of green fluid in calculated, even circles. Redfield waited until the slight-framed man had finished writing his data before asking, "Bennet, how's it looking?"_

" _Another minute before the data's ready," he said factually. "This should be our most efficient serum so far. Any personnel attacked or infected by the E-series or WM-series can receive this dose as soon as it finishes rotation."_

" _I'll send all reports your way." He concurred, and worked methodically along the line of stations. "Lang, any word from Lucas?"_

" _No, sir, our devices we put in the mines haven't picked anything up since Lurking Fear."_

" _Good, I don't need that son of a bitch regenerating. Let's hope the suppressants that the Connections gave him keep him as dead as his mother." Lang's smile mimicked what his must have looked like as he moved along down the tables in his physically manifested agenda. "Garza, any more information on the Swamp Man?"_

" _Nothing besides a few broken machines, most of them were partway through synthesis." Her voice trailed off and she got a look on her face like something more pressing had come to mind. "The girl we rescued a few days ago, Zoe Baker? She was talking about it on the way to the facility when we took her to be cleared. She seemed to think that it was her father, and that we shouldn't declare it dead until we have a body."_

" _E-001 was terminated," he dismissed lightly. "Without her enabling the Bakers abilities, we shouldn't have anything to worry about. Jack Baker is as dead as his wife and son without her influence." Something more somber tinged his voice this time, recognising the growing collateral of the incident. "We have E-001's body, even if it's combined all the mold in the guest house. Having hers is as good as having the whole family's."_

" _Well that's just the thing, Redfield. If E-001 was terminated, there shouldn't be any more molded in the area. You talked to Bennet. Operatives are still turning if they're out there in the bayou too long."_

" _So what, you think that she's got a little network in the molded and that she's still out there somewhere?" And as he said it out loud, a fear rose within him that it might not be too far from the truth. Eveline's decrepit old body merging into the mold in the house, Lucas's mutation even after her supposed death, and the towering monsters that rose from the bayou during Zoe Baker's rescue operation. "She banked her consciousness," he said slowly as distant gunshots punctuated each word. "That's why the serums won't work properly and the Swamp Man won't die. There's still a piece of her out there." He counted his rounds and checked his comm. "Every operative that gets infected out there is only making her stronger. We need to get everyone out of here now. I'm calling it in."_

 _He went to one of the desks and tore a sheet off one of the manilla folders. In rushed, scratchy handwriting, he wrote "biohazard... evac immediately…. avoid all contact." The comm on his shoulder crackled, the gunfire grew closer and cumbersome, heavy rounds thundered through the stippling of handguns._

"It's too bad," a thick voice drawled from the doorway. "I hardly got to have any fun with them."

Ethan turned slowly, knowing the voice without needing to see the face. For a moment, he hardly recognised the disintegrated figure who lumbered towards him. Swaths of skin and pieces of his body were missing, with wounds so open and festering that not even the maggots would salvage it. His swamp-bloated appearance didn't mask the small circular glasses or the familiar bow-legged gait, or the surprisingly high-pitched voice that had constantly rung in his head. "You," the word fell heavily from his mouth as Jack advanced. This scene had played out in the theatre of his dreams before, but this time there was no waking up. "Why did you call me back here?"

"Why?" Jack repeated, lunatic laughter tinged his voice. "I only told you so often. Surely you must have been listening or you wouldn't have come back." His tone turned menacing as he drew within an arm's reach. "You missed a spot, city-boy. Did you miss me?" he sneered and backhanded Ethan with superhuman force, swiping his displayed knuckles upwards across his face. A loud crack sounded as bones collided with bones, snapping Ethan's head back with a teeth-shattering force.

Ethan staggered backward, only to be stopped by the wall, and leaned into it as he regained himself. He blinked and shook the static from his eyes and dazedly watched a long string of blood rappel from his lip to the floor. Stumbling through cloudy thoughts, he reached into his pocket and dug for the knife. Any damage he could do or time he could buy could grant him the chance of escape.

"You got a job to do here, boy," Jack reminded him, striking him again so the knuckles aligned with his temple, and the force dug into the vulnerable point with what felt like the intent to kill.

Half of Ethan's remaining consciousness was expelled into the room with a vocalisation that overlapped with the bursting of blood vessels by his brain. The rough hilt of the knife slipped loosely between his fingers as he fell clattering to his hands and knees. He trembled trying to hold himself up, then bowed to one elbow, breathing heavily as the room swam around him, and fought to focus his eyes on the coin-sized dribble of blood that grew on the floor with stop-motion blinks.

"You ain't gettin away this time," Jack hissed, grabbing the shoulder seam in Ethan's button down and lifting him by his shirt. "You took my family from me, you hear?" He threw Ethan to the wall and pinned him there, one fist clenched immovably around the fabric and the other at his throat to stabilise him as his consciousness wilted. He continued with a sing-song quality to his voice, "You owe me one, Ethan! You'll make it up to us, for everything you did! Do you still have her gift?"

Ethan slurred something incomprehensible as his cheek rolled onto Jack's fingers, eyes burning with a despairing hatred before they flickered involuntarily closed. Intense pressure swelled in his bruised and bleeding jaw as Jack grabbed it so tightly that it bent his loosened teeth in towards his tongue. He choked on a gasp before his eyes opened, widened, rolled back, and an irrepressible scream erupted from his chest.

Jack released him contemptuously, throwing his head to the side with pointed impertinence before demanding, "What'd you say?"

Ethan spat a mucousy clot unsuccessfully down his chin instead of into Jack's face. "Fuck you," he croaked.

Jack smiled with black mossy teeth."Well, now, I'll take it that you don't. I don't know what serums that no-good corporation might have given you to try and take her gift away, but don't worry! It's easy to give." He replaced his hand on Ethan's face, setting his thumb on one cheek and his middle finger on the other, and pinched the joint between Ethan's molars so the hinge of his jaw gave way. He worked his fingers in purposeful circles, finding the gaps and angles that he could wedge between and squeezing them tightly to pry his jaw open further. Ethan's breathing elevated with fear as he tried to combat the physical manipulation Jack was imposing on him. He tried to bite down but only met Jack's fingers wrapped in the flesh of his cheek, and doing so only gave a better implication of where to press next. Jack wedged and squeezed his mouth open with a crushing, inhuman strength until every muscle and ligament was hyperextended and Ethan cried out from pain and protest.

"Oh hush," Jack whispered indignantly, his breath hot on Ethan's face. His words dragged out slowly, buried under a sadistic smile."Accept it," he cooed through tightly grit teeth. His fingers squeezed one notch tighter on Ethan's cheeks, inducing a pain so excruciating it sent a dense wave of black static into his peripheral vision.

Ethan reeled, closing his eyes to the spots that flooded into the edges of perception. _I gotta stay awake,_ he thought, repeating it in his head with every elevated exhale, _I gotta stay awake. If I pass out now, I won't know what he did to me. I gotta stay awake. I can't get help for things I won't know about._ He battled back the static in his eyes and tried to distinguish color and definition from the muddy image before him. Hardly sparing the energy to resist the vice-like hand, he blinked laboriously, and hadn't opened his eyes again when Jack pulled his face forward. Their open mouths connected, wide and dewy and consuming. Ethan's raspy exhales crescendoed into wordless, vocal protests, emphatic and successive as he tried to shake his head free. Jack gripped with expectant tenacity, and affixed Ethan's dizzy, swimming head in his palm, fervently easing Ethan's mouth closed with his own.

Squeezing the joint again, Ethan's jaw yawned open, and Jack's cold tongue filled the empty space between the seal of their lips, muffling Ethan's vocalisations and abbreviated them to one whimpered objection, short and breaking. The grip loosened, almost teasingly, before tightening again as the hand that controlled him allowed their mouths to ebb and flow together, rising and falling with similar rhythm. The tongue probed his adjoined mouth thoroughly, tasting his blood and gauging wobbling teeth, neither eager nor rushing to feel and taste more than what the open space allowed before the motion receded.

He made his way around his mouth as if all Ethan's secrets were printed in braille across his teeth, his tongue, his palette, and he could only read them with the tip of his tongue tracing across every centimeter. When Jack had felt each little detail he could find there, he pressed forward on an inhale and pushed Ethan back against the wall, leaning into him and the crumbling surface with such vehemence that it sent paint chips fluttering to the floor. The impact forced a grimace to Ethan's face and elicited a breathy "mmh" from his throat. Jack probed further, filling the deep reaches of his mouth and caressing the unexplored nooks and crannies in his anatomy and making final, ambitious strokes at the back of his throat. The resistance of the wall prevented Ethan from pulling away as Jack graced his tonsils and the arches that surrounded them. Ethan choked and gagged with stunted whimpers, lurching and shaking as he drew shallow, compromised breaths around the blood that drained down is throat and the bile that had begun to rise. Reflexive, overwhelmed tears collected along his waterline as he suppressed coughs and sputtered around the multiple obstacles that got in the way. His agency slipped before his faltering vocalised protests stopped and his body melted between Jack and the wall.

Taking this as a cue, Jack's gestures grew shallower and regressed to Ethan's palette, to his tongue, to his teeth, until he released his jaw and pressed his lips to the other's once, and then once more with quick, impulsive succession. He pulled away with a red smear across his lips, vermillion pearls dribbling down and crawling through his beard like oily crimson beetles. Ethan's vision had almost completely washed to black flecks before he remembered he could breathe on his own, and the ring of blood and saliva that circled his mouth cooled and crusted over rapidly with every shallow breath he drew in.

Jack released his shoulder seam and Ethan clattered back into the wall, unable to lock his knees in time, swept with such an acute relief that a death-like peace came over him. "Oh, fuck," he mouthed, barely audible as he swayed on his feet. "Fuck, no, no," he begged, as his brain rewarded him for maintaining his consciousness by letting solace take it from him. His unseeing eyes crossed and rolled, and Jack's howling laugh echoed as he sank to the floor, into the first dreamless sleep he'd had in months.


	3. Chapter 3

" _E-than."_ The warped and distant, disembodied voice sounded through the blackness like a towline back to lucidity. " _You didn't kill all of me, Ethan,"_ she chimed, sing-songy. " _I'm still here! And now, so are you!"_

Ethan groaned with all that his partial consciousness would allow. "I'm not," he mouthed, a throbbing headache punctuating his words. "Not for long."

" _You're mine now,"_ she stated lightly, deciding with no hesitation. " _You'll think every thought is yours, but they won't be. You won't even be able to tell a difference. Maybe now you'll play nicely."_

He opened his taut, swollen eyes and expected to see the gaunt young girl lurking by the doorway, or the wheelchair bound woman sitting by the bedside, but no physical manifestation of Eveline accompanied the voice that rung in his head. She was there, he thought, somewhere. Not around the house like before, but up there in his brain with the mold that was never purged away, that was reintroduced unnecessarily. The instinct to escape rose within him as a wordless abstraction.

" _You're not going anywhere,"_ Eveline said before he could act, a calmness washed over him so that he was trapped by his own immovable deadweight. He glanced around the room from his static position as if anything nearby might give him an indication on how to break the spell. Mia had kept Eveline's influence at an arm's length for two years. How'd she do it, he implored, squeezing his eyes shut and straining to lift one arm, how'd she keep her control? His black eye screamed the tighter he shut it and a cut on his brow split slowly open.

He opened his eyes and looked up toward the headboard. "You can't do this, Eveline."

" _I can,_ " she retorted. " _I am_. _And you can't stop me this time, daddy."_ A dim lantern floated past the doorway. " _It's not fair that you took my mommy away! Both of them! You messed it all up, so now all I have is Jack, and you. And you_ will _be a part of my family."_

A grey light flashed in his peripheral vision so brightly that he winced, and he turned his head from one side to the other in an attempt to source it. His mind felt clearer as he lifted his head off the bed and peered to the doorway, seeing if anyone or anything was close. If he was fast, he could make a run for it, or see if there was any hatch in the floor by which to navigate the house from underneath. He dragged his body piece by piece, lifting his weight up onto an elbow, then bending one knee for balance, dragging the other leg off the side of the bed. Eveline felt subdued in his mind, at least for now, as he sat at the edge of the bed and racked his brain for what his options were, and what his capabilities were.

"There now," a matronly drawl spoke as a light waxed golden in the hallway outside. "Good of you to be sitting up. It's not good to eat lying down, you know."

Ethan nearly fell back to his previous position, if only to cover the fact that he had overcome Eveline's weakened volition. His elbow bent part way and his eyes narrowed. "You're dead" he stated slowly, denial pulsing through his pain-bleared eyes. "You weren't like _him_." Jack's howls of his wife's name swept through his mind with the image of his mutated form thrashing and writhing. In a low voice he muttered, "You could have kept her alive, Evie, if you had just given her the power. Jack and Lucas both got it, Mia seemed to, " he tongued his molars as Marguerite's likeness drew closer. They were no longer loose or tasting like iron. "Seems like I do, too." Trigger fingers twitched and drummed against the bed sheets as he places both feet on the floor.

"You eat on up now," Marguerite smiled, her face contorting under Ethan's glare. "No fussing about it now."

Ethan stood up, his vision fading with the sudden movement but only temporarily as he made for the door.

"You wouldn't disrespect hospitality, would you, cocksucker?" She shrieked, "You're family now! You're family now! You're-!"

With a blinding grey flash, she disappeared from the doorway. He looked to the spot where she had been standing and shook his head as if to clear the memory as well. He must have been out for a while if the infection was already becoming that potent, and if that was the case, then he didn't have a lot of time. He huffed a determined breath to himself. This time would be easier. Most of the family gone, most of the traps disabled, most of the puzzles figured out, and most of the house destroyed, he'd be out before sunrise this time. He had a line to Blue Umbrella and Zoe Baker, if he could only reach the house phone.

There was the one in the guest house, but that was splinters now. Begging to a God he'd lost faith in a long time ago, he prayed that Zoe's trailer still sat in the front yard. Jack wouldn't be able to hear the call from out there, either. Less chance of getting locked and processed in the basement. He crept along the hallway to the main flight of stairs, wincing at each creak and bend in the wood and wondering if Jack had superhuman hearing on top of everything else. He crossed the entrance hall and approached the door with the tricolor cerberus, and was about to apply the pressure to twist the doorknob when a low, sinister growl rumbled from beyond the door. Heavy footsteps thudded evenly across the hollow, weakened porch.

He felt his pockets for the knife and found that it was gone. Maybe if he was fast enough he could sprint to the trailer, but there was always the possibility that it had moved. Maybe he was stronger than the molded now, and he could heal, regenerate, even if they sunk their daggers into him. Maybe he wasn't, and the worst thing he could think of was to depend on Eveline's powers. That's exactly what she would want, so he would come crawling back once he detached himself from her deluded idea of family. No, it was better to get a weapon.

He looked over his right shoulder to the dark hallway that lead to the kitchen. He exhaled slowly as he factored this new decision into his plan. Get to the kitchen, secure a weapon, get to the trailer. The image of the Blue Umbrella operative's head lolling in a rancid molding pot struck him again, in a morbid, promising way.

He walked down the long, winding hallway with his right hand on the wall to guide him through the darkness and obscurity. Tight lipped and teeth closely clenched together he mouthed silently to himself, "Where are you, Jack?" Each mention of his name brought prickles across the back of his neck that he wished he could shake off. "Where are you, Jack?" he uttered over and over. He was everywhere. He was nowhere. He kept his guard up suffocatingly high, expecting the gravelly sound of a shovel's drag, or the thunderous growling of a chainsaw crescendoing as it drew closer. Neither came. The silence unnerved him exponentially more. "Where are you, Jack?" It was the cadence that kept him focused, quickly and quietly picking through pots and kitchen drawers.

One heavy pot rattled and removing the lid he found the operative's head again. Eyes watering from the thick, putrid, sour, earthy smell, he jostled the pot to be sure of the metallic sound that clanged in the bottom before he tipped the pot sideways. The head rolled out onto the countertop and let out a low, breathy vowel sound as the anatomy moved with the sudden change. Plastered in the mold at the bottom was an MPM handgun. He loosened the edges with his fingernails and cracked it free. The barrel of the gun clanged against the pot so loudly that Ethan jumped, and the pot fell to the floor with deafening reverberance as it bounced and rolled and came to a stop beside the cabinets.

He checked the clip and counted four rounds. Not a lot, but he could make them count. He had only heard one molded on the porch. The trailer was only a quick sprint away.

He kept his finger close to the trigger as he hustled back down to the hallway, occasional debris tripping his path. As long as he didn't set off an accidental shot, he could deal with the kicked up dust and the clatter of wooden boards and plaster. A cold sweat broke on his lip at the very thought of a wasted round. His pace began to match the circling thoughts in his head that spun in the same repetitive beat: _Every. Shot. Counts. Get. Help. Now. Every. Shot. Counts. Get. Help. Now._

The first glimpses of cold haunted light had graced him when a fist caught his shirt collar and lifted him up in the air. "Whee-hee-heethan!" Jack screeched. "I was wondering when you'd wake up. Don't make this hard on me, son, I'd hate to put you down again."

"I got out once," he snarled, finger curling around the trigger. "I'll do it again."

Jack smiled something sinister. "She won't let you." He jerked his arm and released the shirt collar. Ethan hit the table in the center of the entrance hall with a loud _bang_ while the items on it showered to the floor after him. Shards of glass plinked delicately to the floor and popped under his hands as he tried to get to his feet. A searing pain stopped him. He grimaced at the spread of blood blossoming from his calf and looked down at his hands white knuckling the raises in the soft wood floor. The left had shards and splinters like a pincushion. The right held the pistol, barrel smoking gently, trigger pressed all the way back. He lifted the handgun and lined up his iron sights while Jack cackled. Ethan squeezed the trigger again and the explosive pop of the gun drowned out the sound for a second, and it didn't start again. Jack's palm covered his throat and blood bubbled from the corners of his twisted smile. He hissed and sputtered as black and green oozed between his fingers.

He lined his sights again and the second round sounded, clapping off the bare walls so Ethan's ears began to ring. Jack's knee exploded in shards of bone and scraps of flesh that sprayed the surrounding area. Okay, Ethan thought, there's one to shut him up, one to keep him from following, now I just need to buy a little time to get away-

The shot was perfect. The left lens of Jack's glasses snowed to the floor in silver dust. Jack's head snapped back as the fluid from his eye thinned the blood leaking down his cheeks. The wall painted puce behind him, and debris fell from the wall and writhed on the ground with sentience that wasn't lost in its dispatch.

Ethan tossed the gun and turned to a low crawl. Raised slats in the wood floor, glass, and splinters caught the wound in his leg as he hauled himself towards the door. Jack shrieked as he leaned against the wall regaining himself.

"NOBODY," he bellowed with all the air his rotten lungs could hold, then gulped a vocal inhale, "LOVES," he gutterally wheezed in another barrel chestful, "MEEE!"

Ethan leaned on the door with all his strength and it heaved slowly open. It dragged open with a slow, deep creak _._ The four-legged monster on the other side jumped as soon as the door was wide enough to slash its hand through. Its boxcutter talons caught the stretch of Ethan's ribs and then it retreated so it's hind legs were high while its head was low to the ground. It snarled and awaited Ethan's next move, back legs flexing, ready to jump again.

He turned to his side and hauled himself to the porch. Dragging himself through the warmth of his own blood with one arm, he used the other to seal the gash in his side the best he could. The four legged monster hissed and scratched the dirt where it stood. "Goddamnit," he panted shallowly with bared teeth, looking to the monster, "You were human once, weren't you? I'll leave you if you leave me."

The molded softened, raising its head and levelling it's body to a more balanced position. Ethan must have been hallucinating because it sounded, briefly, like it purred an understanding. Then its body liquified and it sank into the ground, leaving only a shadow in the grass where it had formerly been.

"You see," Jack mangled the words that he tried to speak as they popped through thick liquid. His voice sounded like a shovel being dragged across stone. He leaned in the doorway while tendon and muscle stretched slowly across the gap in his leg. "You're one of us. They don't mind us as long as you don't sneak up on them, they're sensitive creatures. There's no threat here."

Ethan rolled to his back, feeling the rise and fall of his chest, the spread of warmth spreading steadily with each beat of his heart. The Louisiana sky was darker than the city's, all void smattered with track marks of bruise, grey and blue. The smile in his side yawned when he tried to sit up, and fell back with a series of velar stops and aspirations. "I can't die," he insisted. There was still Mia. He played his life with her over in his mind, except this time he saw the business trips, the babysitting job, and all the things he knew the truth of now. The history played fluently, revealing in better light every lie and deception, while he spoke like a scratched CD. "I can't die. I can't die. I can't die."

"My dear boy," he cooed, gurgling. "You're not _able_ to die, anymore."

"I can't die," Ethan repeated. The southern wind carried a coldness he'd never felt before as Jack knelt by his side. "I can't die."

"Hush now," His whisper only bubbled. He slid one hand under his shoulders and another by his knees and lifted him up into his arms. "She'll get you all fixed up in no time. She's good to us. You'll see."

"I can't die." Already the wound in his leg was going numb. He leaned his cheek into Jack's shoulder, and grasped a fistful of his button down. He worked the fabric in his hand to assure himself he was still alive, the promise of healing honeying his thoughts. "I can't die," the phrase fell to a warm whisper, as he was carried into the house, eyes wide and glassy and unblinking, ears ringing, ringing, ringing.

"You won't," Jack hummed. "I've got you. I've got you, now."


	4. Chapter 4

The car by the mangroves had been swallowed by weeds. Only the shine of the paint hinted that it was still there underneath browning long grass and broken tree branches. Insects buzzed a high-pitched hum between the trees and the sound of the bayou lapping over their half-sunken roots. A sticky humid breeze carried the whispers of the long glass in waves: the most noticeable sound for miles, and yet too quiet to hear what was being said.

A low humming slowly grew nearer, distant like a dream at first, a quiet purr that rose to a growl. The suspension squeaked and tires sliding off rocks made a popping sound like hot oil. The car lumbered up to the treeline, until the path that lead to the property became too narrow to drive on. The engine whirred to a stop alongside the mass of vegetation that hid the other car.

The driver stepped out and pulled her thick dark hair off her shoulders. It clung damply to the back of her neck as she looked at the abandoned car beside hers. Already, a nauseating pit sank in her stomach. More than twenty-four hours had passed since Ethan arrived at the Baker's, and neither call nor text nor email had come from him since. Mia had nearly chewed a hole in her lip with worry after the first night alone in their house. Spinning like a ceiling fan, her mind circled back to the same question as she lay in the perfect, absolute silence of solitude: What if he was right? After the first day of no contact, she assumed the worst. Another full day allowed her to gather all the firepower she needed. Even still, anxiety clawed at her incessantly. If Ethan hadn't gotten in touch with her, then something bad had happened. If something bad had happened, then all of Blue Umbrella had been unsuccessful in containing the mess. If all of Blue Umbrella had been unsuccessful, how could she expect to do any better?

She popped the trunk of her car and withdrew a shotgun and a swollen backpack full of smaller handguns and their ammunition. She sighed a hurricane: the unsavory anxiety of returning to the property writhed inside her like snakes. Old wounds that she thought had closed split painfully, dryly open. Something close to self-hatred stung like a slap that she was performing an extraction mission on her own.

She reviewed the scraps of E-001's file that she left in the passenger's side during her drive, the only artifact she kept from her time with the Connections, save for a few scars and more repressed memories than she knew how to count. "Oh, Evie," she muttered to herself as she paged through the photos and notes in the crumbling manilla folder. The whirring of the bayou filled the consequent pause as she considered the conflicting abstractions that followed. A pseudo-maternal guilt regretted that Eveline had been raised in a lab. A lurch in her heart tightened her trigger finger at the thought of Ethan repeating what she had gone through. Then those two feelings washed to red as revenge blinded her, the memories of the last three years rising from their inky depths. She set the folder down and took the safety off her shotgun, and decided bitterly, "you should have stayed dead, you little bitch."

She hustled through the swamp weeds and large stones that littered the path until the mansion came into view. Going in the front door would be too risky, walking into the heart of the house and not knowing what she was up against. She went around the side of the main house to the garage. She crouched to place her weapon on the ground and wedged her fingers under the warps and dents in the door. With all her strength she worked to straighten her legs while the misshapen and rusty door squeaked its protests. She heaved it up to knee height and used her leg to keep the door up. She pushed the shotgun in ahead of her and wriggled under the gap she had created. Her jeans tore across her thigh on the rough edge, but no skin broke.

She inspected the tear and wiped a nervous sweat from her brow when she found no blood. Eveline's methods of infection were multiple and ubiquitous, and there were very few risks that Mia was willing to take that might subject her to Eveline's influence again. She secured her shotgun as the door squealed shut and landed with a sentencing clang.

She had just gone up the stairs to the hall and rounded the corner toward the main entrance when something caught her eye. She backtracked curiously, and quietly pushed the door to the laundry room farther open. Helmets and vests with the Umbrella insignia littered the floor surrounding the table at the center of the room. One of Eveline's boots still lay in one of the corners. Spread out on the table was a button down with pale stripes, a long, fraying gash from the tag to the lowest button, and mottled pastel brown tainting all but one sleeve.

"Oh my God, Ethan," she whispered. Her palms hovered over it so she felt the cool dampness emmenating off of it. A sour smell hung in the air near it and clung to her fingertips as she traced the tear in the fabric and turned the sleeves to investigate the stains.

Think about this carefully, she told herself. The gash and the inferred bloodloss didn't paint a promising picture, but the wash was the freshest thing in the house. The kidnapped victims had received a different treatment than she had when she first arrived at the Baker's. Any foreign body that entered the house after her didn't go to the guest house, they went to the basement to be processed. She set the shirt down and picked up her shotgun. She didn't like that her lead was based on assumption, but it was the only one she had that might help her find Ethan.

She headed down the hallway and through the scorpion door. The swaths of mold on the wall let none of the paint show. It engulfed every surface and corner beyond the door so that crossing the threshold felt like stepping into void. She switched on the flashlight that she kept in the mesh pocket on the side of her pack and expertly navigated the new topography of the room. Her footsteps squelched on the matter as it seemed to crack and writhe underneath her. She wound through the gnarled veins and black tangles, resisting to put her hand on the wall as a guide. Though she knew the treatments she had been given were strong, the thought of becoming Eveline's plaything again sent shudders up her neck and bile to her throat.

The stairs leading to the basement were so overgrown that the warped wood all merged together and formed a steep and jagged slope down. She took a moment to listen for anything that might lurk behind the door and only heard the creaking of the mold like the swing of a taut rope. She descended to the basement and cleared the room with her light each time she rounded a new corner. No disembodied hissing, no voices in her head. All that accompanied her was the rhythmic dripping of moisture from the ceiling onto the floor. The drops split apart and splattered, creating tepid puddles in the rough, root-ridden foundation, and mimicking her footsteps as she pushed deeper into the inky blackness.

She entered the processing room cautiously, expecting the swarms of monsters that crowded it when production was at its peak. Most of the morgues were sealed, the bloody handprints faded, names lost to everything but the family's bookkeeping. She pulled the light from the small rectangular doors to the gurney that sat on the other side of the room.

Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of a figure lying on its side, back towards her. The narrow, limited ray of light caught the folds of a striped brown button down, wrinkled and blotted with black splotches. She approached slowly, waiting for life to be breathed back into the static body. She tightened her hold on her weapon and adjusted her pack. Her sense of duty mounted and she built a plan in her mind. Veteran memories washed her fear to a pale, vapid shadow of itself.

The beam of light scaled the victim from the black shoes to the close-cropped hair. Too fresh to be left over from August. The other victims' bodies had long since decayed into the mold of the house or turned into the staggering atrocities that crept around the property. She looked for a rise and fall in his chest and noticed the gradienting variants of black and puce that stretched across his ribs. She drew closer to the gurneyside and the light revealed a dull blond beneath sable stains and clotted debris.

"Ethan?" she called in a whisper. In another few steps she placed her hand on his shoulder. "Ethan, are you alright?"

"Mia?" Her name carried on a tide of disbelief, turning onto his back and propping up on one elbow. "W-hat are you doing here? You shouldn't be here."

"I came to get you," she explained. "You told me you'd be in the house less than a day and then I didn't hear from you. I couldn't let you go through what I did."

"Have you called anyone – Umbrella, or–?"

Mia shook her head. "I had to know what we were dealing with first."

"Jack Baker," he smeared his mouth with the palm of his hand and dropped it to his side, letting out a bit of a chuckle. "Shouldn't be a surprise." He began to stand and winced and sucked his teeth as the wound moved stiffly with the new thick scar. Dark stains slowly dampened his shirt afresh as Mia took him by the arm.

"I saw your shirt in the laundry room. You must be badly wounded– let me have a look–" The hem of the oversized shirt reached his mid thigh but she lifted each inch delicately all the same, watching the patchy stains on the fabric fill in, trying to gently free the threads from what had already scabbed over.

"It's fine, Mia," he started, swatting her hand away as the shirt rose above his belt. The glimmer of evenly spaced metal caught the light briefly before the fabric slid from her hand so quickly it burned. "He's going to come back any second. Let's get out of here now, and get help later."

"Okay." The tension in her voice matched his, then she repeated it more gently. "Okay. Let's go, then. The exit's this way."

She took his hand and guided him through the corridors by the beam of her singular survival light, almost completely overwhelmed and swallowed by the mold of the house. They navigated the twisting hallways with expert and specific knowledge that only experience engenders. Finally the cold beam of the flashlight merged with the yellow glow shining down from the top of the stairs.

They stopped by the scorpion door and Mia slid her pack off. "Here," she said as she dug through all the firepower she had brought. She selected and M19 and handed it to him. "How many of Evie's little friends are around?"

"Enough to make it difficult," he replied as he loaded his weapon. "Not many in the house anymore. Most are in the swamp or the salt mines."

"Probably from the lack of visitors. Less people to induct into her little family. God, she must be going mad with loneliness."

"Yeah. But then again, she wasn't exactly stable to begin with."

Mia pushed the scorpion door open and listened for heavy bootfalls from anywhere nearby. Over the creaking of the door, she heard Ethan whisper something through his teeth. A sharp "S" cut the air but the rest was inaudible. He's been through a lot, she reminded herself, focusing her attention to the sounds of the house. The wood paneling creaked with every breath of wind. Insects scuttled within the walls like fingernails tapping on a desk. Ethan placed his hand on her shoulder as Mia cracked the door further. The entrance hall appeared empty from her limited viewpoint. She tried to edge forward but Ethan tightened his grip. She looked over her shoulder at him, and before she could ask anything, he said, "I'm so sorry, Mia." His grip trembled and his nails bit her skin. A shudder spread across his body and veins blackened in his face like glass cracking.

"Wh– No, no, no, Ethan, look at me," she started, grounding her shotgun and putting her hands on his jaw. "You're stronger than her. _Fight this_."

"I can't hold her off for long," he choked through tightly grit teeth. The black veins spindled past the collar of his shirt. The force of effort retained color in his cheeks and temples while the rest washed to pallid gauntness. "You should go. Forget you ever knew me. I can be the last victim."

"I'm not just going to _leave_ you here," she insisted.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not giving you that choice." He squeezed his eyes shut and pursed his lips. "You need to go." His voice wavered into a different register. He took her wrists and pulled her hands away, looking at her like it would be the last time. "Go, _now_ ," he pleaded, as the light steadily drained from his eyes and resignation swept his expression. "Oh god," he whimpered weakly. "I've been bad."

Mia's eyes widened. "Ethan." His name fell out in a whisper. His hand snapped to her throat before she could say anything else. She grasped for his wrist to relieve the crushing pressure as he lifted her from crouching to dangling off the ground. In one deft movement he threw her across the room. She landed on her shoulder blades, spreading her arms and slapping the ground to disperse her momentum. She recovered in time to see Ethan raising the handgun she'd given him. She dove for the table at the center of the room and tipped it on its side. Five shots rang out over the clatter of objects hitting the floor. She scanned the underside of the table for grouping. Finding no holes in the fibery wood, she released a shallow, temporary sigh of relief.

She dug in her pack for her last handgun and attached a pre-loaded magazine. She listened for any advancement, triangulating his location in the room by the _tpk tpk tpk_ of his steps. Close range, easy shot. She sprung from cover with one eye closed and pulled the trigger with quick iron sights. The gun snapped back almost at the exact moment as Ethan's head. Her survival instincts coursed within her too potently to feel sick as she ducked back behind the table and twisted her wedding ring, waiting to hear his fall or his footsteps.

Instead a low, bubbling chuckle rose from the direction she had fired. Her blood ran cold and she quickly scanned for a more secure place to hide. There was no cover once she got outside. An exhilarated cheer from the other side of the table burst as loud as a gunshot. She'd have to incapacitate the threat before she could make a getaway. Three more bullets took chunks out of the wood that she hid behind. All she needed was a minute, and place that she could ditch her pack that had no blind spots. Her thorough scanning stopped on a statue at the back of the room where a boy gripped a shotgun confidently.

She lifted a glass bottle off the floor and side-armed it from cover. It skidded over the uneven floor with loud hollow clanking. Instantly she took off towards the small room at the back of the hall. Another round exploded, forcing Mia to dive, as the bottle shattered violently with a sprinkling of glass. She snatched the broken shotgun from the hands of the statue and the doors behind her grated closed. The sounds from beyond seemed distant. She took a larger sigh of relief and set the broken shotgun on the ground beside her.

A rain of plaster, dust, and bugs fell from the ceiling above her. The opaque clouds spaced equidistant from one another. She drew a gasp through her teeth and blinked the fallout from wide eyes. All the noise had drawn some attention. She pressed her hand to the wall behind her and expected to feel the bars she had been trapped behind as Jack's boots thumped above her with a nauseating familiarity.

A heavy bang on the wall behind her jolted her from her thoughts. "Mia?" Ethan's voice broke, muffled from the barrier between them. "Mia, I have a headache."

She squeezed her eyes shut and leaned her head against the door behind her. "Eveline," she called back, testing to see if her imprinting protocol had survived. "Please, Evie, let him go."

A gentle thump beat behind her as he rested his forehead on the seam of the wall. His voice sounded garbled and tense with pain. "Hurts…"

"Eveline," She pried. "I'm going to count to three and then you have to release him."

"Come on, Mia," he whined, scratching at the hinges. "Come kiss it better."

"One," she threatened with an authoritative power swelling in her voice.

A bang rocked the door and an anguished groan rose into a scream.

"Two," she growled, drawing it out maliciously. An upwards inflection at the end insinuated serious and unknown consequences. She took her next breath and racked the slide of her weapon, placing her tongue to her teeth for the final count, when a bang jolted against the stubborn hinges. A shushing sound crossed the door before a heavy slump and clatter of limbs preceded silence.

She took a few slow breaths, looking up at the statue. Okay, she thought, white knuckling the broken shotgun as she lifted it from the ground beside her. Every fiber of her being agonised the thought of leaving him. She would come back, she negotiated with herself. She would bring reinforcements. It was possible, like with Zoe. Everything would be fine. She gripped the M19 tightly in one hand and replaced the broken shotgun with the other. As soon as the doors opened, she sprinted for the exit.

"Well, lookee here," Jack's voice held a tone of paternal scorn. He stomped down one stair after the other so the sound grew louder as he approached. "If it isn't the prodigal daughter. As if having one of my own blood wasn't enough."

The front door shook violently as her shoulder collided with it and knocked the cerberus faces from their place. She tried to force the door but it only rattled a hollow, inanimate laugh. She scrambled to look for the dog's heads. One was within close reach. She grabbed it off the ground and tried to fit it in the ambiguous outline. The bootfalls pounded like a funeral drum. The blue head locked into place. The red one poked out from under the door. Her movements became rushed and imprecise as panic swelled in her gut. As she bent to reach it, she kicked it across the threshold. Sliding her slender fingers under the small gap in the frame, she gruellingly flicked it back towards her. Not fast enough as the heavy piece stubbornly inched along and the footsteps pounded closer.

Doubt rose in her mind like a suffocating fog, but her breath only caught when a raking sound grated across the ground floor. Mia tried to rush her work as it crescendoed, then stopped. A forceful _shunk_ and a blinding pain radiated from her leg. She collapsed as her balance was thrown and grabbed for the source of the pain. Her palms clasped either side of her knee and her scream of agony was replaced with one of horror as her fingers wrapped around the stump where her calf would be.

"That's more like it!" Jack cheered, tossing the shovel irreverently beside her. "I should have clipped your wings a long time ago, city-girl."

She watched through bleary eyes as he strode over to Ethan and crouched by his side. He said something Mia couldn't make out and gently aided him to stand. Ethan stirred and stumbled with a dizzy haze. Black veins radiated from his eyes down his neck as he blinked back to consciousness. "Daddy?" he asked dreamily, then his voice dropped off and he swayed again.

"Easy, boy, take it easy," Jack cooed. "The first headshot is the hardest, but don't you worry. I've got a little something for you." He put his arm around him and walked him to the front of the room. The scent of Mia's blood overwhelmed the bouquet of rot that otherwise stagnantly hung. The spill of it coated the previous debris and stains as if they had never been there to begin with. The swath grew with every fearful beat of her heart.

"Oh god," she hissed through swallowed screams. "Oh god. Oh fuck. Oh god."

"Now, the question is," Jack set Ethan in front of him and smoothed his brown button down off his shoulders so the ill-fitted seam rested on his deltoid. His beard wreathed the cuff of his ear. "What ever shall we do with her?"

"Well," Ethan smiled wryly. "You always did want a bed and breakfast."

"Now that's true," Jack said as he lifted the hem of his shirt and tugged playfully at the staples that lined his side, nails clicking on the edges, "but is that what you want?"

Ethan closed his eyes as Jack plucked at the resistant metal. He tipped his head vulnerably to one side and grimaced in aching ecstacy. Fresh rot oozed green and yellow and white from the tiny punctures. "Mmh," he considered, weakening under Jack's touch. "She could try and take me from you."

One staple plinked onto the wooden floorboards. "I can see to that," he assured as glanced to Mia's detached leg.

"The memory of her," Ethan amended with a hushed moan. "I don't want anything to go back to." He reached to the small of his back and and curled his fingers around the handgun.

"Ethan, please," Mia begged, desperation shredding her voice. "Please, baby, I'll leave and I won't come back. Let me go, and I promise I'll forget I ever knew you."

"Oh, your promises." he clicked his mouth with insidious disapproval. "I know that August was the end of all your lies," he raised the gun and set one foot forward, Jack's hands on his shoulders again now. "One thing I never figured out was what else you were lying to me about. The Connections? The 'babysitting job?' What else, Mia? Our relationship? Our wedding vows?"

Jack's grip tightened on his shoulders as the memories prodded the still uninfluenced pieces of his psyche. "Easy, boy," he soothed, "take it easy."

"It was always you and me," he continued emotionlessly. The M19 poised so perfectly stable it didn't even move with his breathing. "How could I trust you? Really, Mia. Was a family of our own ever a question after that?" A sinister laugh rung in his voice. "Jack had something that we never will. I took it away from him when I had no right to. I owe it to him to fill the gaps." He turned his head to the side and gave Jack a light kiss on his cheek, then turned to face her again slowly, hesitant to pull away, until the barrel of the gun met her eyes again. "I'm sorry, Mia," he said frankly as his finger tightened on the trigger. "You had your chance."

The shot broke the air before Mia could plead or protest. It reverberated in the spacious rooms and echoed in the clatter of her body. Ethan waited for the smoke to dissipate before he lowered his weapon and tossed it off onto the floor. His eyes stayed on Mia until two fingers under his chin coaxed his head away. His empty eyes cast to the side like he could stare through his skull. No twinge of emotion crossed his face and all settled in the consequent silence.

Jack placed one hand at the small of Ethan's back and turned him away from the mess. Ethan still kept his eyes averted, hollow and haunted, as Jack pressed a hand to his cheek. "Good, boy," Jack praised, rubbing one thumb lightly across the short stubble. "You did good."

Ethan slowly lifted his eyes to Jack's face, then an involuntary smile pulled the corners of his mouth to a pert smirk. He wrapped his arms around Jack's neck and tipped his head to one side. "I did what I should've done," he stated airily. "Fair is fair."

Jack glanced over to the corpse and pulled Ethan's body against his own with a gentle sigh. "We'll bring her down to the processing room," he thought aloud, then looking back to his boy, he smiled and adjusted his hold around his waist. "The rest is up to you."

"First things first," he leaned forward so the tips of their noses touched. "You get the rest of those staples out."

Jack smiled and kissed him tenderly, taking his bottom lip sweetly between his own. A mutual, unspoken understanding passed between them as their mouths opened in unison. They kissed as if it sealed a contract. It was a kiss of devotion. It was a kiss of conclusion. It was a kiss that sang _I'm yours, and you're mine, until our undying bodies give out._


	5. Chapter 5

Two weeks passed. Few lucid days that remained were spent locked up in the processing area until there was no need, anymore. When the fits of sanity diminished and quelled to nothing, the house acquired a tenor of uninterrupted domesticity and an uncanny peace. Subsequent days passed quietly. Every little thing that had gone amiss was righted, from the table to the bloodstains.

Ethan sat on a barstool in the rec room, wobbling absently on the uneven legs and rewinding VHS tapes. Supper would be ready soon and the few cassettes that needed attention could wind with or without him. The VCR whirred with an antique hum and the smell of heat and dust spouted from the fan. It would be quicker to stop the playback and let the blank blue standby fill the screen while the reels turned, but something about watching the events play out in reverse was more satisfying. There weren't many to rewind. "Welcome Back," "Happy Birthday," and "Derelict House, June 1" all sat in a stack on the right side of the TV. One had a torn label. A dim "M" forcefully erased still contrasted on the ochre tape. He checked the reels and slid it into the VCR.

 _The screen lit up with the color testing bars as a timer ticked rapidly in the top left corner, just above "Jul. 19, 2017." The color bars flickered a few times and white writing appeared in the center: "Please watch this. stf452 kp-26mx Njtl." The words quivered and then blinked out, and the color bars were sucked to the center of the screen. Solid blue took its place and a tracking bar waffled fickley at the bottom._

The tape whirred loudly for a few seconds, then clicked, and the date in the corner was replaced by "STOP." Ethan set it off to the side. As long as the supply reel was wound, they could tape over it later. The cassette ejected with heavy analog shifts and he slid the next one in.

 _The stippling of handguns thundered through heavy rounds, as the gunfire grew more distant. The comm on Redfield's shoulder crackled as old updates came in, warbled and squeaky. A sign hung on the door of the mansion. The words "Avoid all contact… evac immediately… biohazard" erased in rushed scratchy strokes. The cover of the manilla folder cleaved to its spine as Redfield set it on the desk. The panic settled. Wide-eyed faces placidly resumed their work._

It was a sentiment that Ethan shared.

When the tape had finished winding he set it in a new pile. The other two were of poor Clancy, foolishly thinking he could escape. In the footage, he rose from fire, carved the scars from his arm, circled the house for any promise of help. Ethan smiled to himself as he watched his futile efforts run backwards, bringing him always out of danger but never to freedom. It could have been so easy, he thought, if only poor Clancy had just given in. The dark hidden alleyways cleared to the living room, all the Sewer Gators alive with no idea what awaited them. It felt like starting over except each action they took resulted the same, timelessly, inevitably, and the door to the VCR slot opened.

"E-than!" Jack called, his voice carrying across the house in a high register. "Supper's on!"

As he left the rec room the smell of stewing meat carried easily upstairs, mingling with a salty piscine stench. It grew stronger as he approached the dining area, and billowed in steam from a heavy pot on the table. Jack was already seated, setting a plate and silverware at the spot on his right. A spoon stood near vertically from the thick dark gumbo in front of him and puffed breaths of steam with every stir.

"This looks great," Ethan said, giving Jack's shoulder a squeeze as he circled the table and took his seat. Jack scooped a plateful of cubed white meat and shellfish. The brick roux oozed to the lip of the plate and covered the mottled browns and beiges that mingled within it.

"There's still a good amount of meat on her." Jack said, passing the pot over. "Should last us a while."

"Or we just need more people to feed," Ethan suggested, helping himself to a serving. A charged silence hung in the air and Jack tipped his head with surprise and interest. "I found a blank tape upstairs," he continued with a sly smile. An anticipated tone honeyed his voice. "We could make something for the next ghost hunter or operative that comes by. Start it all over again."

"Now there's an idea." Jack smiled and pointed his knife for emphasis. "This house has been too empty for too long."

An eastern wind swept through the gaps and broken boards in the slatting. The house shuddered, too big for only two. The tremor spread through the extensive walls of the hallway and rattled the dogs' heads in their setting. A four legged molded pawed at the porch door, tapping the deadbolts against the frames. There was no need to change the systems where all was closed and locked. The puzzles remained in tact. Each one, still in its place.


End file.
